This blog is about all of us with our myriad troubles and joys and about our defeats as clues to ensure our victories celebrated with our poetry.

Saturday, 30 May 2015

Our Responsibility Towards The Poor of the Country

Though we have been making long and galvanic strides in different spheres ensuring the possibility of the emergence of the country as a world leader, we have not been able to get rid of the feeling of anguish that many of our people are still poor. In addition to our grandiose
projects and pragmatic schemes for development, what we need to change the lot
of the poor in the country is to create an ambiance of compassion that will
enable us to see the truth and act accordingly. Over the years we have been
able to extricate many of the hapless people of the country from the bane of poverty
but the task is still mammoth in view of the nature of poverty characterizing a
huge number of people still bogged down in the quagmire. In this context we
need to ask ourselves what we do with regard to the poor.

Some of our leaders trained in
the art of populist politics have encouraged us to make the most of the
generosity of the government only at the cost of the poor. But very few of us
have cared to give a thought to it- the way we are forcing the government to
siphon off a huge chunk of the resources that could have been effectively used
for the alleviation of poverty if not for its elimination. We tend to be so
selfish because we do not feel the way we say we do. Many of us love to exact a
price for being Indians without being conscious of the legacy of compassion
that we have inherited from our glorious masters.

Before it is too late we need to
reach out to the poor and the destitute with the greatest of our resources- our
compassion. We need to make them feel they are not to get lost in the dark
caverns of life as long as we around with whatever we have at our
disposal. The stark reality of our
impoverished and emaciated brethren languishing in different parts of the
country and across the road, the bus stop, the station and everywhere only
makes us painfully aware of the poverty of our compassion and that we have not
been able to do just enough for them.

Before we have been blinded by
the flashes of our conceit, our ostentatious and parochial lifestyle, our smart
phones and clichés, we need to be magnanimous to evade the crime of being too
preoccupied with ourselves. The realization should dawn on us that to love the
country is to love the people and surely all of them. Hands are to be stretched
out to embrace those whose miseries are not without our follies. We cannot
ignore our responsibility towards the poor of the country with the excuse that
measures are to be initiated and implemented by the government. If we give away
a bit of what we have that will go a long way towards sustaining the poor. A
forced show of pity will be an exercise in nothingness until we love to love
all of us.